July 29, 2003

The Poisoned Fruit of Anti-Americanism

BERLIN, July 23 (Reuters) - Almost one in three Germans below the age of 30 believes the U.S. government may have sponsored the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, according to a poll published on Wednesday.

In Europe the lunatic fringe is going mainstream.

Maddening as this is, I really do worry for them. I'm beginning to think something terrible might happen over there.

I have an American friend who lives in Belgium, and he recently came by for a visit. I asked him why he thinks Europe is becoming such a dark place all of a sudden, and I must admit I wasn't prepared for his answer.

He said Europe has always been a dark place and it hasn't changed at all.

UPDATE: A couple of readers emailed and accused me of hyperbole. Fair enough. This German conspiracy theory isn't the mainstream.

Even so, I don't think it's right to compare German gullibility to American gullibility by pointing out, for example, that lots of Americans falsely believe Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11 attacks.

There is a qualitative difference between believing Saddam was behind an attack on America and believing that the American government was behind an attack on America.

It is at least plausible that Saddam had something to do with it, even though he didn't. The idea that the US government committed that deed is insane.

Posted by Michael J. Totten at July 29, 2003 12:40 AM

Comments

Let me defend my countrymen.

First, I agree with you that the statement “SH was involved in 9/11” isn’t a good example if you want to show that American’s are equally gullible. But there are better examples, namely:

“There were Iraqi nationals among the 9/11 hijackers”
“Iraq used chemical weapons against US troops in the war”
“WMD have been found in Iraq”

If I remember correctly there is fairly reliable polling data showing that these statements are believed to be true by somewhere between 10 and 30 percent of Americans.

As for the German poll, the important word in the Reuters excerpt is may. The poll, reported in

http://www.zeit.de/2003/31/Umfrage

asked (summarized, not translated)

1. Do you believe that you have learned the full truth about 9/11 in the media ?
2. Do you believe that the US government could have been behind 9/11

“could have been”, not “was”. My guess is that this accounts for much of the 30 percent. It’s still embarrassing, but less so than the Reuters article at first suggests.